Find Bugs On Your Houseplants? Don't Freak Out — Do This Instead (2024)

FAQs

How do I get rid of little bugs on my houseplants? ›

How to get rid of these bugs: Remove any heavily infested parts of the plant. Wipe off insects elsewhere with a damp rag or spray them off with water in the bathtub. You can also dislodge them with a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol or vegetable oil, or spray them with insecticidal soap.

Soapy water creates an effective shield against a wide variety of pests. Mix 5 tablespoons of organic liquid soap with a gallon of water to make a plant-friendly bug spray for indoor and outdoor plants. This solution will suffocate some insects and create a slippery surface that repels others.

Soapy Water

Soap kills bugs on contact. It's easy to make your own natural bug killer for indoor plants. My homemade bug spray recipe is one teaspoon mild liquid soap to one liter of water.

If you see tiny black bugs in plant soil, and flying around your plants – those are fungus gnats. The gnats that are flying around the fruit, or the garbage disposal in your kitchen are fruit flies.

You can make your own organic traps to kill the adult fungus gnats. You can fill the bottom of a deep bowl with apple cider vinegar or red wine, then add several drops of liquid dish soap. Put it near your infested house plants. The gnats love it, and will fall into it and die.

The first thing you're likely to notice is patterns of silvery dots or stippling on the leaves of your plant. Looking closer, you will see small, delicate webs in corners of stems or underneath leaves with what look like tiny white dots scattered throughout. Those are spider mites!

This mixing is necessary because vinegar is strong stuff and can damage plants and irritate the skin when used by itself. Acetic acid makes vinegar an excellent tool for pest control, repelling some of the most common backyard nuisances and even killing weaker insects.

Start by rinsing your plant thoroughly with a sink sprayer, shower, or hose. This will get rid of the majority of adult aphids present on your plant. Then, spray regularly with an insecticidal soap or neem oil. You can also sprinkle systemic granules into the affected planters.

Once they're gone for the moment, spray down the plants with a homemade insecticidal soap. A great recipe for a homemade bug spray for vegetable plants is to use one tablespoon of dish soap, one cup of vegetable oil, one quart of water, and one cup of rubbing alcohol.

Oil Spray: Mix 1 cup of vegetable oil with 1 tablespoon of mild liquid soap. Add 2-8 teaspoons of this mixture to 1 quart of water and spray your plants as above. The oil in this spray smothers the insects so it is effective on aphids, thrips, mites, and scale.

Is soapy water OK for plants? ›

Soapy wash water from dishes or laundry will help keep plants alive in an emergency, but you should be aware of certain possible problems. Chlorine. Bleaches commonly contain chlorine, which can damage plants, particularly if it touches the foliage.

No, it is not normal to have bugs in your houseplants. Don't feel bad about it though, because it is a very common problem. But you don't have to just live with it. You can eliminate them, and have bug-free indoor plants!

Here are a few tips for identifying soil mites: Look for small, brown, or black insects that have six legs and are about one-eighth of an inch long. If the soil is dry, mites may be seen crawling around on the surface. Check for fecal matter or eggs on the creature's body.

Have you seen little bugs fluttering up from your houseplants' pots whenever you water? Known as fungus gnats, they're actually tiny flies, about 1/8-inch long, drawn to moist potting soil and decaying leaves on the surface of the soil around your plants.

Hydrogen peroxide solution is a quick, cheap, and effective way to kill larvae on contact. Mix four parts water with one part hydrogen peroxide and spray down your soil. Fungus gnats are annoying, but they're no match for a plant parent with a plan.

Fungus gnats hate the sole smell of cinnamon. It means you don't even have to use the spice. Cinnamon essential oil should work – its aroma will repel the pesky insects.

Can Spider Mites Live On Humans? Spider mites feed off plant cells and use the plant's surface to lay eggs and spin their protective webs. These mites need plant material to survive, making it impossible for them to live on humans.

What do mold mites look like? They look like spiders but even smaller. They range from white to brown and can only be seen under a microscope or a special high-definition camera. They may even be mistaken for mold at first.

Fortunately, the mites cannot live on humans, do not survive indoors, and are not known to transmit disease.

Can I spray my plants with hydrogen peroxide? ›

As an added bonus, hydrogen peroxide can help discourage unwanted bacteria/fungi that may be lurking in the garden. To give plants an added boost of oxygen or for pest control using the 3% solution, add 1 teaspoon (5 ml.) per cup (240 ml.) of water in a spray bottle and mist the plant.

Take a bottle and combine 1-ounce of apple cider vinegar with 3-ounces of water and mix it together. You can spray this on your plants to keep the aphids off of them, although some plants don't like the acidic nature of apple cider vinegar. It could end up hurting your plants if you spray too much or spray too often.

Mix 1 part oil of lemon eucalyptus or lavender essential oil with 10 parts witch hazel in the bottle. (For each drop of oil, use 10 drops of witch hazel.) Shake gently to mix. Spray to apply.

Early infestations can often be removed by handpicking. Use a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol to wipe off insects such as aphids and mealybugs. Scale insects may need to be scraped off with a fingernail. Spraying a sturdy plant with water will remove many pests.

Use sticky traps

Yellow sticky traps work by trapping the adult fungus gnats and breaking their lifecycle. Simply hang up a trap near affected plants, or attach it to a bamboo cane inserted into the compost. Keep the trap near soil level, as gnats rarely fly far from the compost.

Use alcohol

If you find that live bugs are still living on your houseplants, try soaking a cotton swap in alcohol and dabbing it lightly to remove them from the plant. As well as this, don't forget to wash the pot and plant tray with soapy water as pests can easily hide under the rim.

Does Cinnamon Keep Bugs Out of a Sandbox? Yes, cinnamon in the sandbox does more than creating a pleasant aroma. The strong, spicy scent also repels bugs—they want nothing to do with it! The spice contains eugenol, an aromatic compound commonly found in traditional insect repellants.

Debugging potted plants before bringing them back indoors is a critical first step in indoor plant pest prevention. This method of soaking houseplants in soapy water to get rid of the bugs works great for most types of plants, and will help to make sure you bring outdoor plants inside without bugs.

Keep Pests Away

Sprinkle baking soda on your soil with a flour sifter to keep ants, roaches and slugs away from your garden. (Be sure to avoid your plants!) It's a safe way to keep beneficial insects around and say sayonara to the ones you're tired of seeing.

Baking soda can be used as both an effective insect repellant and as a natural insect killer. It also works to control biting and chewing insects that are common killers of vegetables and garden plants.

Is Dawn a good insecticidal soap? ›

It's not recommended to use dish detergent (like Dawn), laundry detergent, or hand soap (even the “natural” versions), since these soaps contain abrasive ingredients that could harm your plants. For DIY insecticide, organic pure castile liquid soap is the best solution since it's all natural and highly effective.

Treating your infested plants with soapy water is one of the best recipes to use. Soap kills pests on contact. Soap will dehydrate the spider mites and aphids, and it won't hurt your plants.

Apply once a week during light pest season, or twice a week during heavy pest season. Always spray in morning (before sunrise) or in late evening. Never spray in sunlight, or you'll risk scorching your plants. Spray plants liberally, and be sure to get the undersides of leaves, where many pests feed.

Because soapy water works by touching the insects, sprays need to be made whenever new insect populations appear and start to grow. Spraying soap directly on the leaves when no insects are present does nothing, as soap doesn't bother insects if they eat it. It only works if it contacts the full body.

By far the most common types of houseplant bugs are fungus gnats (also known as soil gnats). They are those annoying little black gnats that you'll see flying around houseplants, and crawling in the soil. Since they live and breed in potting soil, they can be very difficult to control.

The most common way for soil mites to be introduced to your houseplants is through the potting mix that you use. They are often already present in soils and are transferred to your houseplants during the potting or repotting process.

For the most part, soil mites are harmless to humans and plants. They are very beneficial to the decomposition process that plants and humans rely on. They can become a nuisance if they begin living in indoor potted containers or crawl around porches and patios.

If you're annoyed by tiny flying insects that appear every time you water your houseplants, you're probably dealing with gnats—more specifically, fungus gnats. These pests are attracted to the damp soil of potted houseplants. They need moist soil to lay their eggs, and the organic matter in the dirt feeds their larvae.

Hydrogen peroxide solution is a quick, cheap, and effective way to kill larvae on contact. Mix four parts water with one part hydrogen peroxide and spray down your soil. Fungus gnats are annoying, but they're no match for a plant parent with a plan.

Does cinnamon get rid of gnats? ›

Chamomile Tea & Cinnamon

Chamomile and cinnamon are powerful natural fungicides, which kill off the gnats' primary food source, therefore making the soil inhospitable.

Hydrogen peroxide is a quick and effective way to get rid of larvae, killing them on contact. Mix four parts water with one part hydrogen peroxide and soak your soil with the solution. Neem oil can also be diluted with water and applied to the soil to kill larvae.

Hydrogen Peroxide Spray to Control Flying Fungus Gnats

Mix one part of 3% hydrogen peroxide and three parts of water in the Mister 360 Spray Bottle. Mist the plant leaves and stems where the adult fungus gnats are visible lightly with water. Repeat the process until no more adults are visible.